Alli Ray, chief of staff at Codeword: ‘Pay transparency is not a taboo subject’

While compensation remains a top priority for employees and job-seekers alike, well-being is also vital. Some 93% of workers view well-being as equally important to salary, according to a recent survey of 5,000 employees produced by corporate wellness platform Gympass.

Alli Ray, chief of staff at content and PR agency Codeword, shares how she elevates transparency within her organization to support worker well-being.

Increasingly, workers expect pay transparency, but also want to balance pay with well-being. How have you structured compensation at Codeword?

Codeword developed our pay transparency philosophy in 2021, so even before it was legally mandated. We wanted to publish our salary bands so that everyone at the company was able to chart their course and figure out what’s next for their career. No two careers are alike, and especially in the marketing and advertising world, it can be hard to figure out what you want as your next step. You have folks who are more focused on the soft benefits, like wanting more flexibility in their workday or remote/hybrid options, etc. Then you have folks that are chasing that bag, and we want to make sure that we’re giving people the information they need so they can build the career that they want, and that we’re doing everything we can to just support them along their journey.

How can other HR leaders be more transparent beyond compensation?

We really strived to have pay transparency be a meaningful benefit for our team and a standard for how we treat people. The leadership at the agency comes from a more traditional big agency background, and we realized that transparency is not a core factor that any of us experienced in a traditional big agency. So, that idea of the “golden rule,” or the standard for how we would like to be treated, pay transparency is something that we all aligned on. Workers need to know, going in, what they’re going to be getting out of it, and they need to understand what the next level is for them.

There’s a trend of two-way transparency that allows us to have more candid conversations with our team, and from the employee/HR view, workers want to know that their compensation is intentional, the company is stable, and that we’re helping them track their performance. We want them to be empowered to know their market value and to negotiate for more pay, but we also want to make sure that we’re offering them the tools and the training to do so. Good negotiation skills help workers in the business world overall. Take the taboo out of these conversations by leveling the playing field and everyone works off the same song-sheet. It allows us to be stronger together.

How can HR leaders support workers to advocate for themselves in a transparent workforce?

We hosted a training called, “How to do your own PR.” We can help workers think about things like developing their own “brag book” and helping people think more broadly beyond your day-to-day tasks. Like, what are the overall contributions that you’re making to the business and how do they formulate a POV that is grounded in mutual and shared successes. Companies should definitely share training materials. We want to make sure that we’re giving people all of the tools that they need to be as ambitious as they would like to be. It’s really on us to make sure that our team is well-armed.

Managers and leaders should always be available to have conversations. Our calendars are open for everyone to see, so everyone, from entry level to the most senior leadership, can book a 30-minute coffee chat with anyone and pick their brain.

Again, pay transparency is not a taboo subject at Codeword. We want people to be here and to like what they’re doing. With pay being such a huge part of how we survive—it’s how we feed our cats—it shouldn’t be a taboo subject.